National
Advocacy groups mark Banned Books Week
‘Book bans have no place in our democracy’
People across the country from Sept. 22-28 are observing Banned Books Week, which has taken on added significance amid a surge of censorship efforts.
Banned Books Week, organized by PFLAG and a coalition of other advocacy groups, literary organizations, and educational institutions, seeks to raise awareness about efforts to remove content from public libraries, schools, and bookstores.
The current wave of book bans, which began intensifying in 2021, is driven primarily by conservative groups who disproportionately target titles featuring the voices and experiences of LGBTQ people and people of color.
“This is part of an organized effort to divide our communities by stoking fears against LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and immigrants,” PFLAG Vice President of Advocacy Katie Blair said. “[It] is targeted not only to banning books and censoring schools, but to infiltrating the lives of LGBTQ+ people and those who love them.”
While LGBTQ books have always been a target of book bans, censorship efforts in recent years are more focused on restricting access to LGBTQ content than in the past.
The Washington Post reports “LGBTQ books were the targets of between less than 1 and 3 percent of book challenges filed in schools” from the 2000s to the early 2010s. In 2022, however, 45.5 percent of unique titles that were challenged were written by or about LGBTQ people.
“Book bans have no place in our democracy,” the Congressional Equality Caucus said in a post to its X account.
Book bans have no place in our democracy.
During #BannedBooksWeek, we’re proud to stand with the authors, teachers, librarians, and readers who constantly stand up and say #LetFreedomRead! pic.twitter.com/T4uhCfnzjN
— Congressional Equality Caucus (@EqualityCaucus) September 22, 2024
On the American Library Association’s 2023 list of the 10 most challenged books, seven books featured LGBTQ voices; with Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer,” George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and Juno Dawson’s “This Book is Gay” topping the list.
The consequences of restricting access to LGBTQ stories and voices are far reaching especially for young people, Blair said.
“These bans contribute to the erasure of our communities and our histories, and all our stories deserve to be told. We believe that all students deserve the freedom to learn. They deserve to be able to develop their critical thinking skills, to be in schools that are open and affirming,” she said.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said another difference in the current wave of censorship is that most calls to censor books in school libraries and public libraries are now driven by organized advocacy groups.
She explained that in the past, most book challenges were initiated by parents and guardians who were concerned about a particular book their child was reading and brought those concerns to a teacher or librarian.
“But now we’re seeing organized groups or their spokespersons showing up at board meetings demanding the censorship of sometimes hundreds of titles all at once. And we’re seeing state legislatures pass laws that are intended to remove hundreds of books, if not thousands of books, all at once, from library shelves,” she said.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 1,128 unique titles targeted for censorship. While this number marks a decline from the 1,915 titles challenged during the same period in 2023, it remains far higher than pre-2020 levels, when challenges hovered between 200 and 300 unique titles annually.
Moreover, PEN America, which tracks the total number of book bans rather than unique titles, counted more than 10,000 books that were banned in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year, nearly triple the amount from the previous year. Both ALA and PEN America’s reports exclude instances of soft censorship, where libraries and organizations preemptively avoid purchasing certain books or restrict access due to fear of potential challenges.
According to PEN America, around 8,000 books were banned in Florida and Iowa alone. Both states passed laws in recent years restricting access to books in schools that depict or describe sex. The vague language of the laws has drawn criticism for exacerbating soft censorship, and has often been interpreted to ban books with discussions of gender and LGBTQ identities.
Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said, it is “not clear what [the language] means, and that is a problem in and of itself, because if teachers and librarians and other educators face discipline for violating that law, and they don’t know what the law means, that’s a due process problem.”
She noted that the laws have been and are being challenged on grounds of vagueness, and for violating the First Amendment.
Banned Books Week, which library activist Judith Krug founded in 1982, will culminate in “Let Freedom Read Day” on Saturday, on which organizers urge people to take at least one action to defend the freedom to read, such as participating in this year’s elections.
Caldwell-Stone emphasized the importance of being engaged at all levels of government.
“This is an intensely local issue,” she said. “While we are seeing state legislation intended to engage in broad censorship across the state, primarily these decisions are made at the local level.”
Moreover, PEN America, which tracks each instance of a book ban, recorded a preliminary total of more than 10,000 books banned in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year in a preliminary count, nearly triple the amount from the previous year.
Throughout the week, filmmaker Ava DuVernay and student activist Julia Garnett, the honorary chairs of this year’s Banned Books Week, are discussing the various ways people can stand up against censorship attempts in virtual events accessible through the Banned Books Week website.
Libraries in D.C. and across the nation, meanwhile, are hosting readings, art exhibitions, and other activities to educate families about the freedom to read.
The Anne Arundel County Public Library system on Wednesday held an event to celebrate its launch as a “book sanctuary,” designating its libraries as “safe havens where the freedom to read is fiercely protected.”
Caldwell-Stone recommends those who are interested in countering up to censorship efforts view the action toolkit available at www.uniteagainstbookbans.org and the ALA’s “Reader. Voter. Ready.” guide at www.ala.org.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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